One of the directors of Black Mirror, Todd Haynes, has teased that a third ‘USS Callister’ outing could be on the way.
The first episode in the ‘USS Callister’ series was released to much acclaim in 2017 and in the latest season, the episode is followed up with a sequel: USS Callister: Into Infinity.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Hayes has revealed that Creator Charlie Brooker shared the idea with him of a USS Callister spin-off series, as well as a movie.
“I think we were all kind of haunted by the people we were years ago who made this Emmy Award-winning TV movie, and now we’re trying to make something that’s got to live up to that,” Haynes said of the project. He revealed that they were talking about a sequel as far back as 2017 when they finished filming the first one.
“I was talking about it as soon as we finished the first one. I said to Charlie, ‘We’ve made the best sci-fi pilot for a show that doesn’t exist. ‘We’ve sort of done an undercover pilot, why don’t we just go straight into a series?’” he revealed, adding: “And he said, ‘Oh, you know, people have talked to me before about spinning off episodes and I’ve never wanted to do it. I like to do fresh ideas.’
“But me and Louise Sutton, who produced that one, kept coming up with ideas and badgering Charlie. Charlie likes to come up with his own stuff, because he’s a genius. But I think by us badgering him, he very quickly saw the scope of what could be done and he started work on it. I think they first talked to me about doing a season of ‘Callister’ back when I was doing Andor. That was the first time it’d sort of become real.”
He revealed that during the actor’s strike they returned to the project, trying to figure out “how do we make this happen in a way that can get everybody back?” After they settled on a sequel, he went on to say they’d love to do another, making a full trilogy.
He continued: “That’s when it got really exciting for me. One film is a sequel. It’s not a series, and it kind of elevates the whole thing into the perfect format for a sci-fi adventure. We could be making our own, I’d like to say, iconic sci-fi trilogy within the Black Mirror world. And what could be better? It’s so exciting. If we do another one! I’d like to make good on the trilogy.
“This was our chance to do Empire Strikes Back or Aliens or even Terminator 2. If we were going to come back, how do we upgrade? There are so many sequels that miss the mark in sci-fi, but there are a few that really hit the mark. How do we be the ones that really justify a sequel by making it bigger, better, more exciting, funnier, more emotional, upgrade the effects. Everything was a huge amount of pressure to try to deliver something special.”
The seventh season of Black Mirror was released on Netflix last week (April 10), and fans have been enjoying the way the opening episode, ‘Common People’, pokes fun at the streaming platform’s subscription tiers.
NME’s James Mottram described the episode as a “very neat satire” as part of a glowing five-star review of the season. He added: “Brooker’s sharp-eyed intelligence and eerily prophetic lens on society is also very much in tune. It’s not all about the twists either. These news episodes, especially the cine-literate ‘Hotel Reverie’, merit a second viewing – but that is par for the course in the Brooker-verse. As they say in the final episode, “a tiger cannot change its stripes.”
English (US) · 